One of the movies was Taken - starring Liam Neeson as an ex-CIA agent whose daughter is kidnapped ona trip to Paris. Two things struck me about the movie. One was - it played like an RPG - The kidnapping is the opening cutscene- the chartering of flights and finding the kidnap location could be done through dialog options - then the discovery of the cell phone - the usage of the memory chip to identify the spotter at the airport - rolling dice with an intellingence modifier or use the spot and search skills. Then a fight. Then some more detective role playing. Then another fight with multiple enemies - more detectiving followed by fighting - culminating with a two step boss fight - with the big bad's bodyguard as the real bossfight followed by shooting the villain.
The other thing was - how many cliches could they pile into two hours? You had evil Muslims (Albanians) kidnapping virginal American girls for the flesh trade - sending their catch to an evil Frenchman (1920s pulp authors - would have used evil Jews - but hey - this is Hollywood. Jews can never never be bad guys here) who auctions these girls off to more evil Muslims (Middle Eastern this time). It seems to be an updation of a number of Edgar Wallace short stories - updated with the torture that is so dear to the American nowadays.
The funny thing is, at some level, it works. It works because of Neeson - because he is so appealingly ruthless - shooting people in the back, killing without speechifying - most of the time - if you removed the question "Where is she" from the script, you would probably cut out 80% of his dialogue.
Oh - and theres a third thing you take away from the movie. In a kidnapped daughter scenario, torture works, and is deeply satisfying.
Other Items
Got me something I wanted for a long long time - a Conway Stewart fountain pen. This pen.
Note to self: Stop using hyphens
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